Pastor. Wife. Mother. Artist. All given just enough time.

Sketchbook Journal Complete

Last night I completed my sketchbook journal for the Journal Making class I’m taking with Sue Bleiweiss. Students in the class are making some incredible journals, and many of us are posting pictures on a class flickr group for our friends and families to ogle.

As I showed in previous posts, I hand dyed the fabrics for this journal. I then monoprinted the front cover with one of my doodle designs. I sprayed silver flecks of paint over all of the fabrics. It’s not very visible in the pics, but it gives a neat sparkle to the entire journal. You can see it a little better in the next pictures on the pocket.

I made the inside pocket by piecing several fabrics together, then stitching channels for sections to hold tags and drawing tools.

Page dividers and tags were made by spraying and washing diluted watercolors onto watercolor papers. On some of them I smooshed plastic wrap, on others I sprinkled salt, to alter the distribution of the paint into interesting patterns.

I’ve put in sections for drawing paper, watercolor paper, and pages with circles pre-drawn for drawing mandalas. Overnight I thought more about how I would like to use this sketchbook and have decided to add two more sections. One will hold graph paper for quilting and needlework design sketching. The other will hold black paper which is great for drawing on with light colored pencils and pastels.

I added shimmery ribbons to the spine for fun and a silver and turquoise button at the closure for contrast to the triangles of the monoprinted design. As usual, my camera puts a blue cast onto pictures so these colors are not as green and blue as they look. What looks like olive green is actually ochre.

I’m quite pleased with the way this sketchbook journal turned out and am looking forward to using it.